View all the Trash Talk / MellowHype photos here

Last week, I ventured over to H Street to check out the “Trash Wang” tour – a team-up between Sacramento hardcore band and MellowHype, an Odd Future side project (featuring Hodgy Beats and Left Brain). I arrived just in time to wait 40 minutes past MellowHype’s start time, but once they got going, it was a lively show, most of the (young) crowd knowing the lyrics to the songs, which I got the impression were culled not just from MellowHype’s, but from Odd Future proper’s discography. One interesting thing was they way they played their backing tracks. Before they played, their stage tech told the sound guy “the live mix is… uh… dynamic”, or something similar, and he wasn’t kidding- Hodgy Beats seemed to be playing all the backing tracks basically from iTunes, skipping songs part way through, hitting “back”, pausing them, replaying cool parts, like you would playing songs for friends in your living room after a few beers. Definitely different than the slick professional hip-hop shows I’m used to, and in a good way.

Earlier, as I walked up and noted the abundant parking, I wondered if perhaps the room would all be young Odd Future fans… and I turned out to be right. They swarmed towards the stage during MellowHype, almost filling the room, but more than half left before Trash Talk came on. At one point, Lee from Trash Talk even asked “Are any of you fans of hardcore music?” from stage, though not in a bad way, as if he was just curious. Still, the ones that stayed got wild… moshing, stagediving, crowdsurfing… you got the impression that most of the kids there hadn’t been exposed to much of this music before, but were still energetic and having a great time. Security, however, seemed to be having somewhat of a worse time, and the band several times had to stop and sort of talk them into not being too down on the antics… they seemed to begrudgingly let most of it continue, and only grabbed the most blatant offenders. All in all, a fun, good old-fashioned hardcore show, which is what I was hoping for.

The absolute best moment, though, was when Lee from Trash Talk grabbed the smartphone out of the hands of a young woman who was texting instead of watching him sing – inches from her face! – and dialed 9-1-1 on it, hit talk, and handed it back. Her face was incredible – and I can only imagine what the 911 operator heard coming through the line.